Come to the Edge

Almost a week later I am still integrating my experience from this year’s Radical Aliveness Retreat. You see last year was a wild, deep, and intense ride for me. Intensely painful at times but with months of hindsight I know it was such a necessary and fruit filled journey. This year was equally moving but in a different way. After all, I’m in a different place personally than I was last year. This is good because it means I didn’t spend the year in between stagnant like a pond in mid-July! And it is all because I have been willing to come to the edge and look.

Imagine you are standing on a ledge and there is a tree branch before you that you just know could not hold your weight. And the teacher says, “Come to the edge”. “Come to the edge.” Would you go?

Of course when I heard this last year besides being scared to death of the idea my first thought was that this woman was certifiably insane. I mean, really. Let’s be real, why would I knowingly wander out on a metaphorical branch that could not hold me? The logical answer is “DUH, of course not.” But I learned over the last two years that there is more to this. It isn’t a “DUH”answer, in fact that is the response that keeps so many of us stuck far from the edge where it is safe, familiar, comfortable, and let’s face it, often painfully soul numbing.